Violence and the young

Where to begin with all this senseless violence? With the 12-year-old who was bouncing a basketball with his dad in New Jersey, when out of nowhere, he was shot and killed? He gets buried tonight.

With the 16-year-old boy in custody tonight for the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old girl who was just riding on a city bus in Queens?

Or with the 12-year-old boy on a city bus on Staten Island who was caught on video pummeling a 13-year-old boy? Not one child, not one adult tried to stop the assault, including the bus driver? I counted at least 12 unanswered punches.

What is going on? What's happening to our kids? Where does all this violence come from? And what kind of parenting is going on that allows these young people to be capable of such violence?

Not for nothin' - many education experts say that perhaps it's time to start serious conversations about longer school days, and longer school semesters. Our kids have too much time outside of school ? especially in some neighborhoods where, except for school, there's precious little to do that ends up not being bad. And summer vacation is way too long, especially in those same neighborhoods where there's simply not enough money to pay for kids' activities.

We'll have the latest on these stories, tonight at 11.

We're also covering the weather tonight. Lots of lightning, some flooding, a mess. And the holiday weekend forecast, which several days ago looked okay, looks not-so-much at this point. L-o-n-g sigh.

We'll also have any breaking news of the night, plus Rob Powers with the night's sports. I hope you can join Sade Baderinwa and me, tonight at 11.

And a note about this column: I'll be off on Friday. We'll return on Tuesday.